Boy turned 'Doom' into school massacre, investigators claim

By Burt Hubbard
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Eric Harris reconfigured a violent computer game called Doom, possibly as a dry run for the deadly shootings at Columbine High School, researchers at the Simon Wiesenthal Center say.

The game, found among Harris' computer files, was changed from a shooting competition into a massacre, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based center, said Sunday.

It had some dying characters crying out, "Lord, why is this happening to me?"

The Wiesenthal center investigates hate crimes and groups.

"What is quite shocking and disturbing is something that might be a diversion for other kids could have been a dry run for Harris," Cooper said. "Basically, what we're looking at is a massacre."

Harris, 18, and his friend Dylan Klebold, 17, killed a teacher and 12 students April 20 at Columbine and wounded 21 others before killing themselves.

Witnesses said the teens methodically walked into the school and moved from room to room shooting guns and throwing homemade bombs.

Cooper said one of the center's Internet investigators found files several hours after the shootings that appear to come from Harris' Web site. They included several versions of the computer game Doom that Harris had created.

The investigators estimated Harris had spent up to 100 hours reconfiguring his versions of the game.

Harris and Klebold were Doom fanatics, friends said. Players travel to a planet where they hunt and kill armed enemies and, in turn, can be killed by demons and enemies. Players are rewarded with weapons as they reach higher levels.

However, the center found a version of the game apparently created by Harris that allows the player to be invincible, Cooper said. The game starts with the player armed with unlimited weapons and ammunition and the enemies unable to hurt him, he said. The player simply mows down all the other characters.

That version is called "God mode." Harris had used God mode to transform the game.

"It changes Doom from a space version of the shootout at the OK Corral to what's more along the lines of the massacre," he said.

Investigators who played the game found Harris' e-mail address embedded on some of the animated walls in the game, he said. In another version of Doom created by Harris, he thanks Klebold for his help.

But Friday night, the Wiesenthal investigators made a chilling discovery.

In some locations in Harris' version of the game, the dying characters talk to God to ask why they have been shot.

"It was very eerie," Cooper said.

During the rampage at Columbine, the gunmen asked several students if they believed in God before he shot them.

Cooper said his investigators are almost positive the audio is not part of the regular game.

"I'm going to conjecture that it was either downloaded from another game or it was recorded and laid in there," he said.

Cooper said the center will alert authorities in Colorado.

"Considering we are all trying to understand what made him tick, this particular game is shocking," he said.

It wasn't the only time Harris apparently had modified Doom.

Neighbor Judy Brown said she has been told that Harris modified the game so that the setting was their neighborhood and the Brooks home was the target.

Staff writer Lynn Bartels contributed to this report.